July 3 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Exodus 2:1-10

¹And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.
²And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.
³And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.
⁴And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.
⁵And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
⁶And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children.
⁷Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?
⁸And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother.
⁹And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the women took the child, and nursed it.
¹⁰And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

Devotional

Abraham's great-grandson, Joseph, was sold into Egypt. In the providence of God his family, the Israelites, lived there as slaves to the Egyptians some four hundred years. Then it was that the boy Moses was born.

Hollywood versions of the youth of Moses might lead us to believe that he was unaware through his younger days of his Hebrew parentage. But the account in Scripture indicates otherwise. The mother of Moses was a faithful mother in Israel who trained her children thoroughly and well so that they knew who their God was and what He had done for them in the past.

It is believed that in the days of Moses babies were not weaned until perhaps five years of age. In this case we can well see how the faith of Moses became firmly fixed upon his God before he was taken to live in the palace-home of the Pharaoh's daughter.

Then it is easy to understand verse 11 where we are told that when Moses was grown he went out to his brothers and saw their misery. He knew they were his brothers, and as he grew older he wanted to see how they really fared. It is not fanciful to imagine that while he was growing up in the court he had a gnawing nostalgia for the simple though arduous life among people who were different because they knew and served Jehovah.

It is being demonstrated that a child's environment in his earliest years has a tremendous effect upon his development. From this springs the trend toward having the new-born baby sleep in his mother's room in the hospital. Likewise, breast-feeding and physical closeness in infancy are being recognized more and more as significant factors in the development of good emotional health.

Are we being as careful that our children should learn the love and discipline of God through us even from their mother's womb?